A former Disney actor will spend two years in federal prison for allegedly enticing a minor to have sex. Stoney Westmoreland, charged with attempting to lure a minor into sex, has been sentenced to two years in federal prison and ten years of supervised release. Westmoreland copped a plea deal with prosecutors after the actor originally faced a ten year sentence. But he was allowed to plead down to a lesser charge of using interstate facilities to transmit information about a minor.
Westmoreland communicated with an undercover officer using Grindr, a gay dating app. He was later arrested in 2018 after trying to meet the investigator who was posing as a 13-year-old teenager.
Salt Lake City prosecutors said Westmoreland, 48, found a Grindr profile operated by a police detective near where the Disney Channel sitcom is filmed. According to court documents, on December 13 the actor took a ridesharing service to meet the boy to take him back to his hotel room. He was arrested that day, and Disney cut ties with him hours later.
An affidavit filed in June 2022 in 3rd District Court in Salt Lake City indicated that Westmoreland began communicating online with a user he believed was underage “on an Internet app used for dating and meeting people for the purpose of engaging in sexual activity.”
The age of the alleged victim is the same as the central characters on Andi Mack and the young actors who play them. The comedy, created by Terri Minsky, follows 13-year-old Andi Mack and her best friends, Cyrus Goodman and Buffy Driscoll, as they attend middle school.
Authorities said Westmoreland tried to meet the apparent underage boy for sex by using a ride-sharing app to order the boy a car to the Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City, UT.
After ordering the ride share for the minor, he was taken into custody by the Salt Lake City Police Department and FBI Child Exploitation Task Force.
According to police, he admitted to sending nude photos, and the victim he was speaking with told him he was 13 years old.
Westmoreland, who played grandfather ‘Ham’ on Disney’s hit series Andy Mack, took a plea deal with the prosecution and will spend 24 months behind bars. He will have ten years of supervised release following jail time and is required to comply with DNA collection and must register as a sex offender, TMZ reported.
Disney fired Westmoreland in December 2018, the same day he was arrested.
In a statement at the time Westmoreland was fired, Disney said, “Given the nature of the charges and our responsibility for the welfare of employed minors, we have released him from his recurring role, and he will not be returning to work on the series.”
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